- The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite pulls a 2,200 to 2,800 Single-core score and a Multi-core score of around 14,000 mark.
- The M3 Pro MacBook Pro manages to get a 3,000 Single-core score and 15,000 in the Multi-core test.
- The M4 processor can easily pull off a 3,700 Single-core score and up to a 14,500 Multi-core score, when it has 10 cores.
Ever since Apple released its brand-new M4 chipset with the OLED iPad Pro, people were damn excited to compare it with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite. After all, there has to be a comparison. On May 20, 2024, Microsoft finally unveiled the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 featuring the highly-anticipated Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor.
Since then, there has been a question on everyone’s mind- How does the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor stack up to Apple’s M4 chipset? Also, people are curious to know how the new X Elite compares to the older-gen M3 chipset.
For the past few months, we’ve been hearing a lot about the powerful specs of this new AI CPU. And now, a raft of early benchmark results have started surfacing via Geekbench. Trust me, the figures are damn interesting.
The Geekbench website shows the early Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite benchmarks. Although the figures vary slightly (which is pretty common for these benchmarks), there’s a pattern. The Single-core score is between around 2,200 and 2,800. Depending on the number of cores a chip has, the Multi-core score comes at around the 14,000-point mark.
For a fair comparison between the new X Elite and the older Apple M3, the M3 MacBook Pro is the best machine to consider. Impressively, the M3 Pro MacBook Pro manages to get a 3,000 Single-core score and 15,000 in the Multi-core test. And, we’re talking about a 12-core laptop. These figures clearly indicate that the M3 chips outperform the Snapdragon X Elite in single-core tests, while the multi-core results demonstrate that Apple’s chip is once again leading. As per the reports, the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite runs hotter than the Apple M3.
Coming to Apple’s M4 chipset, it only has one chip to look at and has either 9 or 10 cores depending on the iPad Pro in question. So, that’s a difficult judgment. According to Geekbench results, an M4 processor can easily pull off a 3,700 Single-core score and up to a 14,500 Multi-core score, when it has 10 cores. When dropped to the nine-core model, the score falls to the mid-13,000. Since a laptop has a cooling mechanism, those scores would improve when we see M4 in a MacBook.
While the figures indicate Apple might have an edge, this isn’t bad news for PC fans. The early Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite benchmarks aren’t poor at all, rather they are good indeed. Microsoft and Qualcomm believe the new crop of Qualcomm chips is geared towards AI workflows, which is likely to become a key battleground in the future. Apple has its Neural Engine, and going forward, AI computing is set to be a big focus for chip and computer makers.
Certainly, we can expect Apple’s M4 Pro and M4 Max to be remarkably more performant than the Snapdragon X Elite chips. The upshot? Apple Silicon chips are only going to be powerful in the long run.
